SPRINGDALE -- Cultural differences, language barriers and legal questions can bar parents from getting involved with their child's school, parent Ruth Lora told educators Thursday.
"It's kind of hard to learn from a new country new rules and new laws," said Lora, a panelist at the annual Bridging the Gap Symposium from the Arkansas Department of Education Commission on Closing the Achievement Gap.
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Parents like her needed to be involved, to be invited to the school, said Lora, parent at Bonnie Grimes Elementary School in Rogers. Padres, the parents support group at her school, started with six Spanish-speaking parents in 2009. Now there are hundreds of parents who attend the quarterly meetings.
"They need to understand in their same language in order to understand how everything works," Lora said.
The program was one of the ideas touted at the statewide symposium held Thursday at the Jones Center in Springdale. Attendees said the ideas were good. There was a mix of research and opinion, but the outside sources added context, said Maria Alvarez, English as a Second Language facilitator at Southwest Junior High School in Springdale.
All students should advance in their learning, but that isn't always the case, said Gary Ritter, director of the Office for Educational Policy at the University of Arkansas.
State goals for schools include eliminating test score gaps between rich and poor, black and white. The state tracks scores of Hispanic students compared to the general population and tracks students learning English or those enrolled in special education. Educators are mandated to reduce the span between the general population and these focus groups under a waiver from No Child Left Behind.
"The gaps are real," Ritter said, introducing an Office for Educational Policy report that tracked gaps in scores through several different tests.
"They are persistent. They matter a lot, and you need to do something to fix them," he said.
He urged school leadership to try new ideas, to test ideas and discuss what they find, both good and bad to educate the public.
Overcoming poverty and blending different language and cultural backgrounds were themes for the day.
Some families have saved 10 years to come to the United States from the Marshall Islands, said Julia Crane, English as a Second Language specialist at Monitor Elementary School in Springdale. There is a gap between test scores of the Marshallese students and the general student population.
School facilities in the Marshall Islands vary, Crane said. Children might have been to private school, or they might have been going to school in a warehouse with few books and teachers with few certifications.
Parent liaisons help her contact families and build bridges, Crane said. She drew parents to the school through a program that loaned iPads to student parent teams with learning programmed in. Celebrations are key to Marshallese culture, and the school added one celebrating the student grades.
She is starting to see results. Parents brought in digital devices and asked her to load learning applications. Seventeen of the 144 Marshallese students at Monitor had perfect attendance this year, Crane said.
The digital divide is the next problem facing schools, said Michael Mills, assistant professor at the University of Central Arkansas.
He grew up poor, Mills said, but there was a library across the street. He credits his library visits with his success today.
"My opportunity was by luck, sheer luck," Mills said.
Today's students have a library in their pockets, he said, holding up his smart phone. In some schools, especially in lower income areas, students are told to put them away.
"One of the biggest problems we have with equal opportunity is trust," he said.
State education money has leveled out between wealthy and poverty-stricken districts, Ritter said.
There are still schools facing poverty and have many students learning English. Grace Hill Elementary School in Rogers has both, but the school's test scores are high, Ritter said. The school has gaps, but they are backward of the national trend. Hispanic students outscored non-Hispanic students, he said.
Gaps aren't impossible to overcome, Ritter said.
Anne Saullo, literacy facilitator at Grace Hill told other teachers that passion and commitment to the idea every child could succeed helped make the school successful.
"Not everything was successful right away," Saullo said.
NW News on 06/13/2014